Gawker Challenges Verdict in Hulk Hogan Sex Tape Trial

Hulk Hogan is accustomed to a good fight—and Gawker Media is ensuring that he gets one.

The second round of the legal rumble between Gawker and Hulk Hogan has just begun. The New York news and gossip site filed two motions yesterday challenging the verdict that could cost it $140 million for posting excerpts from a sex video featuring the former pro wrestler.

Last month a Florida jury found that Gawker had violated Hogan’s privacy and awarded him $140.1 million in total damages to be paid by Gawker, founder Nick Denton, and former Gawker.com editor A.J. Daulerio. The multimillion dollars awarded could be hugely damaging to Gawker’s business.

In court documents filed yesterday, Gawker argues that it deserves a new trial and that, even if a new trial is not granted, the multimillion dollar damages awarded should be “vacated or greatly reduced.” Gawker also filed a motion requesting a judge to overturn the decision of the jury.

At its root, Gawker maintains that “key evidence was wrongly withheld” from the jury during the trial. The company also believes that the jury wasn’t “properly instructed on the Constitutional standards for newsworthiness.”

“We expect to be fully vindicated,” the company said in a statement. “And even if the verdict were to stand, there is no justification for awarding ten of millions of dollars never seen by victims of death and serious injuries.”

Throughout the trial, Gawker maintained that the company posted an edited video clip of Hogan having sex with his former best friend’s wife because it was a “matter of public concern,” meaning it was newsworthy. The company argued the post was therefore protected speech.

Hogan’s legal team maintained that the video was private and that posting it led to emotional distress, and the jury agreed. “We emerged victorious once and we plan to do so again,” David Houston, Hogan’s legal counsel, said in a statement. “It is apparent Gawker is unable to accept responsibility for their actions or demonstrate any intention of correcting their behavior.”

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Peter Thiel Just Got His Wish: Gawker Is Shutting Down

Employees of Gawker Media at the company’s New York headquarters in 2011.Landon Nordeman/Redux

After a 14-year run, Gawker.com is shutting down next week. Gawker Media’s new owner, US Spanish-language TV network Univision, made the decision to shut down the site after bidding $135 million for the web publisher’s seven-site portfolio in a bankruptcy auction earlier this week. (A bankruptcy judge is set to approve the final sale later today.) Gawker’s outgoing CEO Nick Denton broke the news to staffers in Gawker’s Manhattan office today.

The end of Gawker is also the end of an era in the web’s short history. As one of the original online journalism upstarts, Gawker pushed editorial boundaries beyond the niceties of traditional mainstream journalism in a way that has come to define the tone and style of news on the web. At its worst, Gawker published articles with seemingly little news value, like its purported outing of a Condé Nast executive (Condé Nast is WIRED’s parent company). At its best, Gawker punched up with a vengeance, holding powerful public figures and institutions accountable. In the process, Gawker often angered those same powerful people, including two fateful posts that led to its undoing: one that identified billionaire venture capitalist Peter Thiel as gay, and another that excerpted a Hulk Hogan sex tape. Thiel secretly bankrolled Hogan’s invasion of privacy lawsuit against Gawker, and Hogan won in court. The $140 million judgment against Gawker eventually bankrupted the company, forcing it to sell its editorial assets. Now Gawker.com is no more.

Gawker writers will reportedly keep their jobs at one of Gawker Media’s six other sites, or at other properties owned by Univision. (The TV network also owns the tech-centric Fusion, the black news and culture site The Root, as well as a minority stake in The Onion.)

Wherever those writers land, Gawker’s shuttering is a sobering reality check not just for its own employees but journalists in general. Whether or not you agreed with its approach, Gawker’s willingness to push limits and stir controversy underscores the whole point of the First Amendment. “The biggest [downside] is losing the financial independence that let us write whatever we want without any fear of corporate overlords trying to quash us,” one Gawker Media writer told WIRED when the company declared bankruptcy. Now, it seems, those outside forces—with the help of a powerful tech tycoon—accomplished just that.

Univision Makes Winning Bid for Gawker at Bankruptcy Auction

Univision is buying Gawker Media. The television network and web publisher reportedly placed a winning bid of $135 million to purchase Gawker, which declared bankruptcy after losing an invasion-of-privacy lawsuit to former pro wrestler Hulk Hogan. A federal bankruptcy court judge is set to approve the final sale Thursday.

Univision beat out publisher Ziff Davis, which started the bidding at $90 million, in a bankruptcy auction today. (Last year, ahead of the Hogan trial, Gawker Media founder Nick Denton pegged his company’s worth to be in the $250 million to $300 million range.) It will acquire Gawker’s entire portfolio of seven sites, which cover everything from cars and sports to feminism and Silicon Valley. But Univision may or may not keep Gawker Media running in its current form. It could wind down the flagship Gawker.com site, which posted the Hogan sex video that resulted in the suit. It could also sell certain sites off piecemeal to an interested buyer. New York-based web publisher LittleThings has already expressed interest in buying feminist-focused Jezebel for $10 million, though it’s unclear for now whether that offer is under consideration.

With the sale, Gawker effectively stays the court’s $140 million verdict while transferring its most valuable asset—its editorial operation—to a new owner during the appeals process. (Denton has also filed for personal bankruptcy to keep Hogan from seizing his own assets.) “This gives (Gawker) the breathing room to find out whether or not the court’s judgment will withstand the company’s appeal,” says Michael Fay, a bankruptcy lawyer with Berg & Androphy, who is not involved in the case.

For Univision, best known as the largest Spanish-language broadcaster in the US, the Gawker purchase may signal a more aggressive digital strategy. The company is already the sole owner of the tech-centric Fusion and last year bought The Root, an online news and culture site for African Americans. It also owns a minority stake in The Onion. Gawker would dramatically expand the editorial range of Univision’s web presence as well as its audience.

For Gawker, meanwhile, the sale is the culmination of a vicious legal battle waged against it by Silicon Valley magnate Peter Thiel, who sought to shutter the company for what he described as its reckless willingness to profit from clickbait that “attacked and mocked people.” Thiel secretly bankrolled Hogan’s lawsuit but has since openly defended his effort even as critics have called Thiel out for seeking to undermine a free press.

“I am pleased that our employees are protected and will continue their work under new ownership—disentangled from the legal campaign against the company,” Denton wrote in an email confirming the Univision sale. “We could not have picked an acquirer more devoted to vibrant journalism.”

But Gawker said it remains confident it will ultimately prevail, arguing that evidence from an FBI investigation and testimony from a key witness not introduced to the jury would sway an appeals court in its favor.

“There is so much this jury deserved to know and, fortunately, that the appeals court does indeed know,” Heather Dietrick, president and general counsel of Gawker Media, said in a statement. “So we are confident we will win this case ultimately based on not only on the law but also on the truth.”

Jurors in the three week trial did not see evidence from an FBI investigation into an alleged extortion attempt against Hogan unsealed shortly before they returned a verdict in the case. The judge presiding over the case also ruled that Bubba Clem, whose then-wife Heather Cole was recorded having sex with Hogan in the video, did not have to testify. Dietrick said the investigation evidence, along with Clem’s testimony and previous court rulings in Gawker’s favor, would vindicate its First Amendment argument in the case.

In 2012, Gawker.com editor A.J. Daulerio posted an edited video reel that included several seconds of Hogan having sex with Cole. Hogan sued the site, founder Nick Denton, and Daulerio for invasion of privacy. Throughout the four years of legal wrangling, Gawker has maintained that the story and video are protected by the First Amendment. On Friday, the jury sided with Hogan, awarding him $115 million in compensatory damages. Today, the jury awarded an addition $25.1 million in punitive damages, including $15 million from Gawker Media, $10 million from Denton, and $100,000 from Daulerio.

“We are extremely happy with the verdict and Mr. Bollea feels vindicated,” Hogan’s legal team said in a statement. “Our victory will also deter others from victimizing innocent people. This verdict now requires those organizations to respect privacy and if not pay the price for failing to do so.”

Gawker Is Really Great—No Really, It’s So Great

So great, in fact, that acting executive editor John Cook publicly shared a memo he sent to staff this morning (and that Gawker’s PR sent to us) touting the company’s great reporting.

In a memo headlined “Ignition,” Cook highlights some major recent headlines—the The New York Times‘ investigation into Amazon’s treatment of its workers, Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server, and the dozens of allegations against Bill Cosby—to claim that Gawker was reporting on all of them before “the establishment press” (which is great, and which definitely doesn’t include Gawker):

The impact of the Times’ [Amazon] story is in fact a testament to our own power here at Gawker Media—our ability to sniff out the stories that other less agile outlets are ignoring (for now) and read them into the record without navigating the hurdles and barriers to fast, honest publication that exist for our competitors. … If there is a lesson here, it is that we need to work on how to package and present our reporting in a way that launches these conversations and investigations outright, instead of serving them up to our purported editorial betters to amplify and extend them.

Okay, we get it. And, to be fair, this summer for Gawker was rough. With the looming Hulk Hogan lawsuit and an internal blow-up over a controversial post, Gawker could use a few wins. And the memo certainly seems in line with founder Nick Denton’s vision for the new and improved Gawker with its mission to be 20 percent nicer. But for a company known to ooze snark (or is it smarm?) over everyone else’s successes (and failures), we have to say: maybe you too don’t need to share everything.

Top Gawker Editors Resign After Controversial Story Pulled

Two top Gawker editors have resigned today in the latest fallout from a controversial post the site pulled on Friday.

In their resignation letters, Gawker Media executive editor Tommy Craggs and Gawker site editor-in-chief Max Read called the decision to pull the post an unacceptable violation of the divide between Gawker’s business and editorial operations.

Craggs and Read both expressed frustration with Gawker Media’s managing partners, who voted last week 4-2 to remove a post from the site that purportedly outed a top Condé Nast executive. (Condé Nast is WIRED’s parent company.)

“That non-editorial business executives were given a vote in the decision to remove it is an unacceptable and unprecedented breach of the editorial firewall and turns Gawker’s claim to be the world’s largest independent media company into, essentially, a joke,” Read wrote. The editorial staff expressed similar concerns in a public statement Friday.

Gawker founder and CEO Nick Denton, who voted to remove the post, responded to the uproar from his editorial staff in a lengthy post today. “For the first time that I can remember, I cannot stand by a story, or just agree to disagree, or keep silent,” Denton wrote.

“It was my responsibility to step in to save Gawker from itself, supported by the majority of the Managing Partners,” he said. “This is a one-time intervention, I trust, which will prompt a debate about the editorial mission, and a restoration of editorial independence within more clearly defined bounds.”

Gawker Pulls Post as New Media Enters Midlife Crisis Mode

Last night, the popular news and gossip site Gawker posted a story outing a top Condé Nast executive. (Condé Nast is WIRED’s parent company.) The blowback was swift and furious. Many of Gawker’s commenters were outraged. Many journalists took to Twitter to lambast the site for exposing the sex life of a private citizen without any indication of why the story was relevant or newsworthy to the greater public.

This morning Gawker pulled the post—the first time the site “has removed a significant news story for any reason other than factual error or legal settlement,” according to Gawker owner and founder Nick Denton in a post detailing the decision.

The company’s six-member managing partnership voted 4 to 21 to pull the post, with Denton joined by the heads of advertising, finance, and strategy. Gawker Media Executive Editor Tommy Craggs and the company’s President and Chief Legal Counsel Heather Dietrick both dissented. But the decision hasn’t exactly quelled the disgust, and the involvement of the company’s business leaders in editorial decision-making—a bright line that news organizations typically do not cross—has outraged the editorial staff. The post and its aftermath reflect a media company in a moment of reckoning—the reassessment of identity that comes from realizing you aren’t a kid anymore.

“The media environment has changed, our readers have changed, and I have changed,” Denton writes. Once the proverbial bad boy of online journalism, Gawker has migrated to the mainstream. “Gawker is no longer the insolent blog that began in 2003.”

Once-new media, it turns out, is entering middle age. And like so many mid-lifers, the transition is sometimes accompanied by crisis.

All the Truths

Since its founding, Gawker has notoriously, proudly adhered to its banner of putting “truths on the Internet,” exposing the private lives of Bill O’Reilly, Shepard Smith, Hillary Clinton, and Hulk Hogan.

“We are proud of running stories that others shy away from, often to preserve relationships or access,” Denton says.

The Hogan sex-tape story sparked a major lawsuit that could ruin Gawker financially if a jury decides against it. Even so, Gawker and Denton have stood defiantly by the story. Unlike the Hulkster, however, the target of last night’s story did not seek the public eye. Nor do his decisions have an impact on the public, even if his brother was once the Secretary of the US Treasury. As the culture of the Internet matures, Gawker’s audience seems to have discovered where it draws the line.

“Gawker has an influence and audience that demands greater editorial restraint,” Denton acknowledged.

The Internet, after all, is no longer a nerdy subculture or side-light to our “real world” lives, especially compared to twelve years ago when Gawker launched. The Internet is where public life happens, and the public is beginning to demand behavior and ethical standards we’ve always taken for granted IRL.

Gawker’s troubles come at the same time as Reddit, a site founded in 2005, is facing its own reckoning as its leadership determines whether it can contain the subcultures of hate that fester on the site while still upholding its founding ideals of community moderation and free expression. Such a conflict might seem minor if Reddit was some obscure corner of the online world. As one of the most trafficked sites on the Internet, however, it faces constant, relentless scrutiny, and lots of people care about the decisions its leaders make. Reddit, like Gawker, is growing up in the public eye. And as is so often the case with child stars, it doesn’t always go smoothly.

1UPDATE (July 17, 2015, 8:25 PM ET):Gawker initially reported their management team voted 5 to 1 to remove the post with Gawker Media Executive Editor Tommy Craggs as the lone dissenter. The site has since corrected its own post to say that the vote was 4 to 2 with Heather Dietrick, the President and Chief Legal Counsel of Gawker Media, also dissenting.